Douglas (play)
Douglas is a blank verse tragedy by John Home. It was first performed in 1756 in Edinburgh.
The play was a big success in both Scotland and England for decades, attracting many notable actors of the period, such as
The opening lines of the second act are probably the best known:
My name is Norval; on the Grampian Hills
My father feeds his flocks; a frugal swain,
Whose constant cares were to increase his store.
And keep his only son, myself, at home.— (Douglas, II, i)
Plot
Lady Randolph opens the play mourning for her brother. Shortly thereafter, she discloses to her maid that she was married to the son of her father's enemy. She was not able to acknowledge the marriage or the son that she bore. She sent her maid away with her son to the maid's sister's house. They were lost in a storm and never heard from again.
Young Norval, the hero, is left outside shortly after birth to die of exposure. However, the baby is saved by a shepherd — Old Norval [2] — and thus gains his name. He is in fact the son of Lady Randolph (daughter of Sir Malcolm[2]), by Douglas, and he is briefly reunited with her.
Sir Malcolm exposes the child, but Young Norval is given a commission in the army.[2]
When he saves the life of Lord Randolph, the lord becomes indebted to him, and Young Norval gains the envy of Glenalvon who is the lord's heir.
As was common in Romanticism, many of the main characters die, except for Lord Randolph. Lady Randolph takes her life, after hearing of the death of Young Norval who has been killed by Lord Randolph, who was deceived by Glenalvon. In turn, Young Norval had killed Glenalvon, because Glenalvon had been spreading lies about him.
Theme and response
The theme was suggested to him by hearing a lady sing the ballad of "Gil Morrice" or "Child Maurice" (FJ Child, Popular Ballads, ii. 263). The ballad supplied him with the outline of a simple and striking plot. It was Home's second verse drama, after Agis.[3]
After five years, he completed his play and took it to London for
David Hume summed up his admiration for Douglas by saying that his friend possessed "the true theatric genius of Shakespeare and Otway, refined from the unhappy barbarism of the one and licentiousness of the other." Gray, writing to Horace Walpole (August 1757), said that the author "seemed to have retrieved the true language of the stage, which has been lost for these hundred years," but Samuel Johnson held aloof from the general enthusiasm, and averred that there were not ten good lines in the whole play.[4]
Douglas also elicited the famous Edinburgh audience exclamation, "Whaur's Yer Wullie Shakespeare Noo?," a remark meant to imply the superiority of the Scottish Home's superiority to the famous English playwright. The play was also the subject of a number of pamphlets both supportive and antagonistic. It also arguably influenced James MacPherson's Ossian cycle.[3][5]
Because Home was hounded by the church authorities for Douglas, he resigned from the Ministry in 1758,[3] and became a layman. It may have been this persecution which drove Home to write for the London stage, in addition to Douglas' success there, and stopped him from founding the new Scottish national theatre that some had hoped he would.[3]
Literary references
Jane Austen's Mansfield Park (1814) and George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss (1860) both allude to the line "My name is Norval".[6]
Young George Osborne recites it, eliciting tears from his aunt, in Thackeray's Vanity Fair (1847–48), p. 504.
Harry Walmers in Charles Dickens' The Boots at the Holly Tree Inn also refers to it:
Consequently, though he made quite a companion of the fine bright boy, and was delighted to see him so fond of reading his fairy-books, and was never tired of hearing him say my name is Norval, or hearing him sing his songs about Young May Moons is beaming love, and When he as adores thee has left but the name, and that; still he kept the command over the child, and the child was a child, and it's to be wished more of 'em was
There is also another reference to Norval in
Rev.
Hugh MacDiarmid, the twentieth century pioneer of the Scottish Renaissance, included the following lines in A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1922):
My name is Norval. On the Grampian hills
It is forgotten, and deserves to be[7]
Also referenced in George B. Shaw's play You Never Can Tell by the twins, Philip and Dolly.
See also
- William Warren (elder actor)
References
public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Home, John". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 626.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the- Ousby (ed) Cambridge Companion to Literature in English (1993)
- Drabble, Margaret (ed.) The Oxford Companion to English Literature (fifth edition) 1985)
- ^ "Edmund Kean". Arthur Lloyd.co.uk. Archived from the original on 19 July 2012. Retrieved 13 August 2012.
- ^ a b c Drabble, Margaret (ed.) The Oxford Companion to English Literature (fifth edition) 1985)
- ^ a b c d e f Keay, J. & Keay, J. (1994). Collins Encyclopaedia of Scotland. London. HarperCollins.
- ^ Boswell, Life, ed. Croker, 1348, p. 300
- ^ Crawford, Robert (2 August 2007). "Whaur's yer Wullie noo?". Herald Scotland. Archived from the original on 20 May 2011.
- ^ Price, Leah, The Anthology and the Rise of the Novel: From Richardson to George Eliot (2003), Cambridge University Press, pp 79, 80
- ^ MacDiarmid, Hugh A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, ed. K. Buthlay (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1987), l.2192-5